Syrian helicopter crashes as regime kills dozens in airstrike on petrol station

A Syrian military helicopter that rebel fighters claimed to have shot down on Thursday actually crashed after a freak collision with a passenger jet, according to President Bashar al-Assad's information ministry.

President Assad pictured as a Syrian military helicopter that rebel fighters claimed to have shot down on Thursday actually crashed after a freak collision with a passenger jet.Photo: REUTERS

By By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent

4:18PM BST 20 Sep 2012

The helicopter plummeted to the ground near Douma, an area on the southern outskirts of Damascus where heavy fighting had earlier been reported, after allegedly clipping the tail of the airliner.

The unidentified aircraft was said to have landed safely at the Damascus International Airport, with no injuries reported among the 200 passengers reportedly on board. The fate of the helicopter's crew remains unknown.

"The helicopter struck the tail of the plane," the information ministry said in a statement. "The control tower at Damascus airport confirmed that the plane landed safely at Damascus airport and all 200 passengers are in good health."

Opposition activists had earlier cited eye witnesses as saying that rebel fighters had brought down the helicopter with small arms fire. But they also admitted that so far no rebel unit operating in Damascus had claimed responsibility for the incident.

In the propaganda campaign raging alongside Syria's increasingly deadly civil war both sides have an interest in relating their own version of what really happened.

Late last month, Syrian rebels shot down a military helicopter for the first time, a symbolic moment in the campaign to oust Mr Assad, who has used the aerial superiority of his armed forces to stem rebel gains.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed in "indiscriminate" bombing raids by Syrian fighter jets and helicopters, according to human rights groups.

In one of the deadliest single air strikes of the civil war so far, as many as 54 people were killed after a military fighter jet bombed a petrol station in the northeastern province of Raqa'a.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition group based in London, said that between 30 and 54 people died when a petrol station in the village of Ain Issa exploded in a ball of flame after being struck from the sky.

"The petrol station is the only one that is still open to customers in the area, and it was packed," an opposition activist in the province told the French press agency AFP.